The 100th Regression of the Max-Level Player - Chapter 2

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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The Maxed-Out Player’s 100th Return – Episode 2
2. Hwang Yong-min
Darkness consumed the Alley.
Crack— pop!
A group cracked open beer cans and gulped them down greedily.
“Yes! Finally I can drink beer legally.”
“Nah, not yet. There’s still thirty minutes until the new year.”
“Damn it! Seriously. How much longer do we have to hide in this Alley like rats?”
“You’re the rat here. Why are you lumping us in with you?”
“Because I’m annoyed. Aren’t you guys annoyed?”
Hwang Yong-min drained his beer in one long gulp, then irritably hurled the empty can away.
“Hey, got a light?”
“Right here, Yong-min.”
After lighting a cigarette with a sharp click and exhaling deeply, the wrinkles on Hwang Yong-min’s forehead finally smoothed out.
“Why do those old farts keep us from doing something this good?”
“Because they’re old farts, that’s why.”
“Hehehehe.”
Hwang Yong-min and his friends laughed, delighted by the joke.
But whenever someone passed through the Alley, they stopped laughing and cast a chilling gaze.
A look that said: mind your business and keep walking.
Without fail, everyone pretended not to see and scrambled away.
This time was no exception.
“Hehehehe, hey. See that? How she bolted when she caught my stare?”
“Your stare? What, do your eyes glow in the dark or something? It was so dark, all we could see was the cigarette.”
“But hey, that girl who just passed by—wasn’t she pretty? She had kind of a vibe like Seo A-rin.”
“Seo A-rin? Really?”
“Man, I’d love to bury my face in Seo A-rin’s chest.”
“Hehehehe, you’re insane.”
“Hehehehehehe!”
When Hwang Yong-min made a ridiculous face, his friends burst into raucous laughter.
“Hehehehe, hey. If you like her, go ask for her number.”
“Will she give it to a minor?”
“Why are you scared? You’ll be an adult soon anyway.”
True to his words, midnight would mark the turning of the year.
His days as a High School student were nearly over.
“Once break ends, graduation’s basically here. No more boring High School.”
“What are you gonna do after graduation?”
“I’ll ask my dad to buy me a motorcycle and look into delivery work. Heard you can make good money doing deliveries these days.”
“That so? What about you, Tae-sik?”
“I’m thinking of getting into a factory with dormitory housing before military service. My family nags me so much I can’t breathe at home, damn it.”
Hwang Yong-min chuckled as he watched his friend exhale cigarette smoke along with a sigh.
“What about you, Yong-min?”
“Me? Didn’t I tell you before? I’m going to become a gangster.”
“Seriously? Were you actually serious about that?”
“Wasn’t it a joke?”
At his friends’ shocked reactions, Hwang Yong-min’s expression hardened.
“I answered you pretty seriously, and you thought I was joking?”
“Of course. In this day and age, who has joining a Gangster Organization as their life ambition?”
“A gangster? Aren’t you scared? If you mess up, you could get stabbed in the gut and die.”
Despite his friends’ concerns, Hwang Yong-min only scoffed.
“Damn it, do you live life twice? I’m just going to live however I want and then die.”
“This bastard’s got no shame, seriously.”
“Hehehehe.”
His friends laughed and snickered, but deep down they were all thinking the same thing.
‘Crazy bastard.’
While they themselves were known troublemakers at school, compared to Hwang Yong-min they were nothing.
In their eyes, Hwang Yong-min was just a complete delinquent.
‘Yeah, go ahead and do whatever you want….’
‘After graduation, I’m cutting ties with this psycho.’
‘Absolute lunatic….’
Even friends he’d known since middle school found themselves distancing themselves from Hwang Yong-min.
“By the way, when you graduate, what happens to that shuttle you’ve been bullying?”
“Shuttle? Who?”
“You know, that loser in our class.”
“Oh, that kid with no parents?”
One corner of Hwang Yong-min’s mouth curled up pleasantly.
“Even after graduation, I’m not letting that bastard go.”
“Hehehehe, you’re going to keep using him even after graduation?”
“Of course. He’s my personal shuttle.”
“Wow… That’s so damn pathetic. He probably thinks being a shuttle ends after graduation.”
“Who said it ends? I’m going to play with him as much as possible.”
“You’re truly evil. Even Satan would call you hyung, hehehehe.”
The delinquents, chuckling among themselves, emptied their beer cans.
Then, glancing at his phone, he noticed midnight was drawing near.
“Hey, it’s almost New Year’s.”
“Oh, really?”
“Should we go see the bell ringing? There’s an event happening right in front here.”
“Okay, okay. Let’s go.”
Hwang Yong-min and his gang headed toward Bosingak to hear the New Year’s bell.
“Wow, there are so many people.”
“They’re swarming like ants.”
“Look for any pretty girls.”
While scanning the surroundings and observing the crowd.
“Huh? Yong-min, look over there.”
His friend jabbed his arm repeatedly, pointing to one side.
“Isn’t that him? Your personal shuttle.”
Hwang Yong-min’s gaze turned toward Ryu Min.
“Oh, right. My shuttle.”
Seeing him outside school stirred an inexplicable sense of familiarity.
“Did that loser come to watch the bell ringing too?”
“Maybe he came to pray for a new year without getting bullied by Yong-min.”
“Haha, that’s an impossible wish.”
“Tell me about it, hehehehe.”
Hwang Yong-min, who had been snickering, stopped in his tracks as he moved toward Ryu Min.
‘Hmm? That bastard….’
Ryu Min simply stood there, seemingly lost in thought.
Yet something about his presence felt different.
He didn’t look like the usual slouching shuttle he knew.
‘What is it? There’s something subtly different about him compared to before….’
Just then, the announcer shouted.
“The time has finally come! Let’s all count down together!”
The crowd erupted in excitement, counting down.
Hwang Yong-min and his gang joined in the countdown, eager for the new year to arrive.
‘Kid, I’ll let it slide today.’
He had no desire to bully him on New Year’s Day itself, so he didn’t approach any further.
“…3, 2, 1! The new year of 2022 has finally arrived!”
“Woooooooo!”
A frenzy of celebration.
In the midst of it, Hwang Yong-min and his friends exchanged words with one another.
“Happy New Year!”
“Happy New Year!”
“You’re finally an adult! This year, may you all accomplish your….”
[Tee-hee-hee.]
Hwang Yong-min, about to offer his well-wishes, suddenly fell silent.
An unidentifiable voice had abruptly echoed through the air.
[Kyohohoho. Your panicked expressions remind me of monkeys trapped in a cage.]
The voice, heard once more, stripped the smiles from everyone’s faces.
Hwang Yong-min was no exception.
“This is a prank, right? Right?”
At first, he dismissed it as a tasteless broadcast stunt, but when Angel appeared in the sky surrounded by light, his perspective changed entirely.
‘This… this is real. It’s definitely not a joke.’
Even with my own eyes, it was hard to believe, but the floating Angel defied any other explanation.
And more than that.
Splurch—!
The young man who had spoken casually to Angel watched his head explode.
“Kyaaaaaaah!”
“Gasp!”
Hwang Yong-min’s expression froze like everyone else’s around him.
‘What the hell…! What kind of insanity is this on New Year’s Day!’
In all my life, I had never witnessed a person die.
Certainly not a death so violent that a head burst like a firecracker.
Because of this, Hwang Yong-min couldn’t even breathe properly in front of Angel.
When I glanced around, my friends were in the same state.
‘But…’
My gaze shifted toward Ryu Min.
‘Why isn’t that shuttle bastard’s expression changing?’
The Ryu Min I knew should have been trembling with fear or frozen like a statue.
Yet the Ryu Min before my eyes showed no fear whatsoever—only composure.
In fact.
‘Huh?’
He suddenly turned his head and locked eyes with me perfectly.
‘How did that bastard know I was here…?’
And then he even curled one corner of his mouth upward.
As if mocking me.
‘That bastard…!’
The confident expression on the shuttle’s face—something I’d never seen at school—twisted my heart, but that was all.
‘Just wait, shuttle bastard.’
This wasn’t the time to express my anger.
Not when I’d just learned I was trapped in a hellish survival game where I had to survive twenty rounds.
[Well, I guess the explanation’s done. Shall we go? Kyohohoho.]
As Angel’s demonic laughter faded behind us, my vision went black.
* * *
‘So Hwang Yong-min was watching after all.’
When I attended high school, I was a quiet student.
Nothing special, unremarkable, utterly ordinary.
‘I thought if I just kept my head down and didn’t cause trouble for anyone, everything would be fine.’
But things didn’t go as planned.
Simply because I sat near Hwang Yong-min, I became a target.
I hadn’t done anything particularly irritating or stood out in any way.
‘After that… well, I experienced every form of bullying imaginable.’
During every break, I was mocked relentlessly, and whenever they grew bored, I’d be dragged to the mountain behind the High School to be beaten.
I was forced to buy them bread, alcohol, and cigarettes.
When the Convenience Store owner caught me and the police called my parents, I had to speak with a bitter expression.
-I don’t have parents.
When they asked why, I had to answer reluctantly.
-They passed away in a traffic accident during my middle school years.
At that point, the sympathetic officer would simply tell me not to do it again and send me home.
‘And then the harassment would just repeat all over again.’
A vicious cycle repeating endlessly.
There was nothing I could do in the face of those stronger than me.
I suffered every humiliation imaginable—so much so that going to High School became terrifying.
‘But not anymore.’
After countless regressions and deaths, I had become an entirely different person.
The timid, weak version of myself no longer existed.
Ninety-nine regressions had transformed an ordinary person into someone extraordinary.
Perhaps that’s why.
I could maintain my composure even when seeing Hwang Yong-min, my tormentor.
‘Truth is, I feel nothing when I see him.’
The reason was simple.
I had already avenged myself on him so thoroughly through repeated regressions that I’d grown tired of it.
‘Was it around the seventh regression when I first took revenge on him?’
Once I’d gained confidence in my strategy and grown stronger, I exacted my revenge on Hwang Yong-min.
I repaid everything he’d done to me in full.
Though he begged for his life, I became vengeance incarnate and killed him.
Not just once.
With each regression, I killed him again and again.
Until every ounce of my resentment had been exhausted.
‘But after repeating it more than twenty times, it became meaningless.’
Since I’d exhausted my revenge long ago, now on my hundredth regression, I felt nothing when looking at Hwang Yong-min.
‘There’s no point in taking revenge again now. There’s nothing to gain from it. When I do kill him, I need to use him first, then dispose of him.’
I already had a plan in my mind for how to use him.
But I had no intention of bringing him all the way to the final Round.
‘For now, what I need to do is…’
I lifted my gaze.
There I stood, alone in an empty, pure white space.
A moment later.
[Kyohohoho, I’m sure you’re all curious about where you are, yes?]
That familiar demonic voice echoed once more.
[You are now in individual spaces where you cannot see each other. Before we proceed with the soul transfer, we must construct your physical forms. In gaming terms, you might call it creating an avatar.]
‘A kind of customization, then.’
Most would have been flustered by the mention of an avatar, but Ryu Min remained composed.
He had created dozens of them before, after all.
Soon, an avatar bearing his exact likeness materialized in the white expanse.
The avatar mirrored his movements perfectly, like a reflection in glass.
[From now on, you can adjust your face and body however you wish. You can also choose a nickname to use in the other dimension. It’s identical to character creation in a game, so there shouldn’t be any difficulty.]
Since teenagers and young adults already accustomed to games had been brought here, the process should proceed without issue.
[You only get one chance, so everyone should decide carefully. Shall we start by choosing a nickname?]
Moments later, a mechanical voice—entirely different from Angel’s—echoed through the space.
[Please state the nickname you wish to register with the system within 30 seconds.]
[If you fail to decide within the time limit, your real name will be automatically registered.]
‘My nickname is….’
Ryu Min’s lips moved without a moment’s hesitation.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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